16 San Diego scientists named to elite society

Gary Robbins

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San Diego has been synonymous with science for decades, a point of pride that surfaced in a big way recently. The prestigious American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) elected new fellows, 16 of whom came from three of the county’s best-known institutions: The University of California San Diego, the Salk Institute, and the Scripps Research Institute.

Anyone can join AAAS, the country’s largest honorary scientific organization. But AAAS elects fellows, chosing only those who have made significant contributions to their fields.

This year’s fellows were chosen from a broad cross-section of scientists on “the Mesa,” the stretch of La Jolla where the county’s scientific community is centered. Here are this year’s local fellows:

Scripps Research Institute

Phil Baran
, chemist. Baran, an emerging star at 35, has developed new ways of thinking about the practical construction of molecules, which is essential to creating new drugs, better materials and useful chemicals for agriculture. Baran is especially well-known for finding ways to mimic nature in creating synthetic molecules that can quickly and easily be turned into drugs. His lab won an international race to find a way to produce Palau’amine, a compound that helps fight cancer, bacteria and fungus.

J. Lindsay Whitton
, immunologist. Whitton says on his website he wants to make “life as difficult for viruses as they do for us.” He takes a broad approach to the problem, studying everything from the molecular machinery of viruses to the nature of antiviral T cells. Whitton also has focused on ubiquitin, a protein that attaches to a virus and tags it for destruction. And he’s been helping to develop a vaccine against the Lassa virus, which kills about 5,000 people a year in West Africa.

Hollis Cline
, neuroscientist. Cline studies how visual stimulation affects development of the brain, research that’s helpful in understanding why some brains are normal and others are not. Much of her work has involved tadpoles; she exposes the tiny creatures to such things as rows of flashing lights. Her experiments revealed that such stimulation can both strengthen synapses in the brain, and cause new ones to occur.

Jin-Quan Yu
, chemist. Like Baran, Yu’s research could make it faster and cheaper to make new pharmaceutical drugs. He developed a method to break apart the carbon-hydrogen bonds found in many molecules, and then to create new bonds to join molecules together. The advance helped simplify the process of creating synthetic drug molecules, including those used in agriculture.

Salk Institute

Joseph Ecker
, geneticist. Ecker helped determine the genetic sequence of Arabiodopsis thaliana, a tiny flowering plant that is widely used as a scientific model in plant biology. This led to improvements in agriculture, and could result in new medicines. He also is well-known for studies of ethylene gas, which causes fruits and vegetables to ripen.

Joseph Noel
, plant biologist. Noel figures out how plants and microbes produce the chemicals they need to survive and thrive in various ecosystems. He also determines how to tweak the process at the molecular level to make food more nutritious, and he looks for ways to create chemicals that can replace petroleum-based resources.

University of California San Diego

Ratnesh Lal
, mechanical and bioengineer. Lal’s work in microscopy has allowed scientists to see how cells work and interact. His research has led to a better understanding of the biological basis of diseases, such as Alzheimer’s, cancer, diabetes and tuberculosis. His research also allowed researchers to design better ways to diagnose and treat these conditions.

David Kleinfeld
, physicist and neuroscientist. Kleinfeld studies two basic aspects of brain function using rodents as a model. One involves studying how animals fix the location of objects relative to their body at the same time that their sensory organs are moving. The second involves the flow of blood in the brain, and how flow is regulated by changes in cognition. His work has helped understand mental health in humans.

Victor Vianu
, computer scientist. Vianu’s research aims to make sure that databases and the applications they power are accurate and efficient. His work has made an impact on everything from databases involved in every search performed on the Internet, every Social Security check the government cuts, and every online purchase customers make.

Aneesh Manohar
, physicist. Manohar is an expert on heavy quarks, elementary particles that are fundamental building blocks of matter. They combine to form the relatively stable components of atoms, protons and neutrons. Manohar studies how the forces between particles can be altered, which is key to understanding the forces of nature in fine detail.

Jeffrey Esko
, cellular and molecular medicine. Esko studies chains of important sugar molecules on the surface of human and other mammalian cells called glycans. He found that glycans in the human liver can help the body clear fats from the blood, which could pave the way for new therapies for hardening of the arteries. Targeting these sugar molecules on blood vessels may also inhibit cancer growth.

Dimitri Basov
, physicist. Basov studies novel materials that have unusual properties, such as the ability to conduct electricity without resistance. Using infrared light as a probe, he looks for electronic and magnetic clues for why materials behave in potentially useful ways. His goal is to guide development of devices like logic chips for computing that use the spin of electrons rather than just their charge or magnets that store energy with great efficiency.

Benjamin Grinstein
, theoretical physicist. Grinstein explores fundamental principles that govern the basic building blocks of nature, and how they interact. He works closely with experimental physicists to develop tests for such things as string theory, which examines what the world is made of. Grinstein’s research has helped with such things as understanding the high-energy collisions generated by the Large Hadron Collider.

John Newsam
, chemist. Newsam, a UC San Diego chemist and chief executive of San Diego’s Tioga Research, studies drug formulations that are applied to the skin. Earlier, he worked on catalysts used in petroleum refining and in producing chemicals.

Arthur Wolfe
, physicist. Wolfe studies how galaxies form, focusing heavily on the early stages of stellar evolution. His work has helped to explain the events that produced the rotating disks of stars and gas that are present in spiral galaxies today. Wolfe's surveys have discovered most of the cold gas in the universe back to a time not long after the big bang.

Katerina Semendeferi
, anthropologist. Semenderferi studies the evolution of the human brain and behavior. She compares the neuroanatomy of brains in humans, apes and other primates to explore the neural systems involved in complex cognitive and emotional processes, as well as in mental disorders.